


Harry Potter and the Annual Quidditch Game

by OlderShouldKnowBetter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, Gen, Post-Hogwarts, Quidditch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:59:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7184306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OlderShouldKnowBetter/pseuds/OlderShouldKnowBetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year there is one game of Quidditch that Harry Potter, the now successful Auror, looks forward to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Harry muses about the upcoming game.

 

Harry was excited.

He’d been excited for weeks really, maybe even a month or more. It was that time of the year again, these holidays rolled around (typically a slow time at work) and it was time for yet another annual Quidditch match.

He loved Quidditch, absolutely loved it. He’d chosen to take a different path in his adult life and he didn’t regret it for one moment; he knew the good that he’d personally done, the lives he’d saved, and wouldn’t have traded it – the bad times and the good – for any fleeting fame and glory on the field of Quidditch. But he knew he would have been good. He didn’t dwell on it, he wasn’t that sort of person to continually regret his past actions or decisions. 

He especially didn’t do so around his wife. How shameful would it be to rub a ‘never-was, but-I-could-have-been’ in her face when she’d had an impressive career all of her own and on the back of not inconsiderable skill herself. He never let himself think, “If only…’ he wasn’t that type of person. It was also good that, even though she was a handy seeker when she wanted to be, she was a far better chaser and had pursued that position in her professional career. So no one was likely to make any negative comparisons between them, a happenstance that went a long way to ensuring marital harmony.

It didn’t mean to say that he didn’t enjoy his annual forays out into the field, or that he didn’t look forward to them with barely concealed anticipation. Ginny had been rolling her eyes at his schoolboy enthusiasm for the upcoming game for weeks now.

He tied up the last lace on his outfit and went outside to see who he was up against this year. He should have known, it was the same as last year so he said, “Hello Draco.”

The blond head turned his way, and the man’s eyes narrowed as he regarded Harry in his neat uniform, but one eyebrow twitched upwards as he said “Potter, so it’s that time of year again, is it?”

Harry couldn’t help smiling back, “It seems to be, and here we are again.”

They were both set for the annual Auror vs Dark Wizard exhibition game.

Harry left Draco and joined his teammates. They were a similar crew to last year with his old mates, Ron in goals and Dean as lead chaser. Ron had grown up considerably since they’d left school and become an adult. He had to now hold down a job and had gotten married and had a kid with another on the way. So whilst he did still suffer from nerves when he played in front of a crowd, it was not nearly as bad as it had been at school. Maybe it wasn’t all the adult stuff, maybe it was having to fight Voldemort and his Death Eaters and all the battles with dark wizards that he’d had to do as an Auror. Whatever the case, Ron looked a confident figure when he mounted his broom and took up his position in front of the goals, and if he was nervous, it was probably only those closest to him that knew.

Dean no longer worked with the Auror department, actually when Harry thought about it he didn’t know what Dean was doing, jobwise, at the moment – he seemed to flit from job to job. He was here though because he still did work for the department as a sketch artist when Harry needed him. Harry knew how good dean was with a pencil in his hand and, because of their shared history, he could always say stuff like, “remember Zabini, eyes like his, but with a nose like Ernie McMillian’s.” Though recently, Harry’d had the bright idea and just had whoever had witnessed the perp to draw out their memory into a pensieve and have Dean draw from the image directly.

So that’s why Harry could get him back, he still was technically with the department. He wanted him back because he was still a great chaser and could work with these younger blokes and get them functioning as a team. It helped that he’d had a hand in training both of them.

Harry gathered his team together and gave them a bit of a pre-match pep talk. “OK, here we are again, another year and another game vs the Dark Wizards. Now I probably don’t have to say it, but it bears repeating, that you all know that they will cheat like bastards.”

“That’s only because you set it up that way,” interjected Ron, with a grin and a rueful expression, “you almost encourage them to cheat.”

The others laughed, because they knew the truth of his words. Harry couldn’t help but laugh too – he had made the penalties for cheating light, quite deliberately in fact. “Be that as it may, only you McTavish, our caster, and Debbie … where are you, ah there, Debbie Diggle, our catcher, are allowed to use wands. Now I know that your job is mainly offensive,” talking to McTavish, “and yours, Debbie, is defensive, but you can mix it up as the situation demands. In fact you know how we’ve practiced – the more you mix it up the better because they don’t know who will do what.”

“Now you know they’ve all probably got wands - yeah, yeah, Ron I know they shouldn’t and you know we can’t have our own because we’re the ‘good guys’ – and they’ll all probably use them at some stage. The penalties are ridiculously light for doing so; who ever thought them up, I don’t know what they were thinking?” he said tongue in cheek, producing another wave of grins and laughter.

“OK, so get out there and do your best and hopefully this year we might reverse our losing streak.”

They mounted and flew off to take up their positions, and once again Harry felt the exhilaration and joy of playing Quidditch taking him over.

* * *

**Author's Note: Hi there this story was originally written for a challenge on HPFF, but it received little love or little attention there, lost as it was amidst about five hundred other entries.**

**I've always wanted to repost it somewhere else and seeing as I'm starting out here, this is as good a place as any.**

**The story encapsulates the head cannon that I have for one of the things that happened after the War. I would have put it into my other stories - the Pride and Scorpius verse ones - except that it doesn't fit in with the timeline of events that I want to use in those stories. So here it is here. As all chapters are already finished, I shall be posting them one every week. EDIT: the time is up and all the chapters are now here. Enjoy!**


	2. Part Two.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Harry muses about the game in progress.

The game was not going well.

Harry knew he had to catch the snitch and soon, otherwise it would be yet another loss for the Aurors and it would make it then four years in a row that the Dark Wizards had beaten them.

Three years ago an unlucky bludger strike combined with two simultaneous stunning spells had taken Dean out of the game early on. Without his stabilising influence the other chasers had fallen apart and even though Harry had caught the snitch it had been far too little and far too late. And yeah, there shouldn’t have been two stunning spells, but what did you expect? The Dark Wizards cheated; it wouldn’t have been the first time.

The next year Draco had employed that old Slytherin tactic of large and brutish and intimidating chasers. It had worked too. Dean and his two very green players had been beaten into submission. The Dark Wizards score had been far greater than the Auror’s, but Harry had had to catch the snitch when he did (even though he knew that they would lose) because Draco had seen it at the same time as him and they both had to chase it down. If Harry hadn’t the score would have been 140 points even worse than it was.

The next year Draco had brought the same team of bruisers and this time the chases for the Auror’s had performed much better; they had the Dark Wizard’s number this time. As an aside Harry thought it had been a good bit of training for his newer Aurors – they had been one year older and wiser and had learnt to discount physical intimidation over superior skill. It did wonders for their confidence in their proper, every-day jobs as Aurors.

They should have won the game easily but it had come down to Harry and in an uncharacteristic turn of events he had not caught the snitch. When he’d eventually caught sight of it, so had Draco and Draco had been in a far better position to catch it than he was. In the end Draco had made an easy catch and had snatched victory out of the jaws of defeat.

Leading up to the game Harry’s team knew it was going to be different this year. The line-up for the Dark Wizard team was the same as the previous year. Harry had thought it unwise of them – an unusual tactical slip upon Draco’s part – his chasers had had their number last year and in the few training session that they’d managed to have, the Auror chasers had their tactics to combat the brutish chasers fully worked out.

Harry had to laugh to himself, even though he was flying around the pitch dodging the occasional bludger and a random spell or two. They knew the line-up because it had been published in the Prophet weeks and weeks ago. That’s what Harry found funny, the Prophet loved the annual game and ran a column about it that started at least a month before the game and then ran another one for at least two months afterwards. Harry, in what he humbly regarded as a clever move, made the arbiters for the rules of the game the public, through the offices of the Prophet. As the Dark Wizards found new ways to cheat, there would be a massive back and forth from the supporters of either side through the newspaper. Eventually it would be decided which of the new 'cheats' became enshrined by a new rule and which didn't. It generated interest; it sold papers (which is what the Prophet liked); and it was just one part of Harry’s greater scheme which he thought – hoped – PRAYED – was effective.

And there would be a lot to be said about Draco’s latest ploy, Harry sure knew. Because even though the line-up for his team had been announced in the Prophet weeks ago, that was not the team that Harry faced on the field today. In a sudden, last-minute substitution, two of the older, really thuggish chasers had been replaced. There was a rule banning the Dark Wizards from employing any current professional Quidditch players, but Draco had gotten around that in a very clever way.

Firstly, one of the replacement chasers had just ‘retired’. Ginny had retired herself, but she’d kept up her contacts with the Quidditch community where she’d built up quite a bit of respect. She was thinking about parleying that respect into a different phase of her career, because, from Harry’s contacts at the Prophet, they both knew that the Quidditch correspondent was about to retire himself. Anyway, she knew what this ‘retirement’ – of the Dark Wizard chaser that is – was all about; it was almost certainly a ruse to drive up his asking price and allow him to swap to a team that would pay him more. So he probably wasn’t really retired as such.

Secondly the other replacement chaser was fresh out of Hogwarts. When one of Harry’s young Auror trainees saw the kid’s name he groaned because he knew exactly who she was. When the Auror-to-be had left school the other kid had only been in fifth year, but she had already become the brightest rising star of school Quidditch even then. It wasn’t a matter of _if_ she would play Quidditch when she left school, but rather _which_ Quidditch team would be lucky enough to get her. It had been a surprise in certain circles when she hadn’t been immediately snatched up. But of course someone (probably Draco) had given her enough funds to keep her off a professional team for long enough to be eligible to play for the Dark Wizards.

It was a master stroke and these two chasers were running his team ragged. If Harry didn’t catch the snitch and soon, it would be yet another year and yet another loss.

That’s when all reminiscing about the past was forgot; all thoughts of the future were put aside; because here in the present Harry Potter had caught sight of the snitch.


	3. Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter we see the few seconds that it takes to catch the snitch, from Harry's POV.

It all came down to this.

The hours of the game that had proceeded were as naught to these stretched out seconds of play.

The annual game between the Auror team and the Dark Wizards had been an exciting game up till this point, but now it ramped up to fever pitch. The noise of the crowd echoed it, but little of it impinged upon Harry’s consciousness. His chasers had actually done themselves proud against the two ‘professional’ ring-ins that Draco had organised. They were not strictly professionals - that was against the rules and they would not have been allowed out on the field of play in the first place – but they were as close to professionals as you could get; one had just retired and the other one was about to start her professional career. But Dean and his chasers had just managed to hold their own and keep them in the game, such that a snitch catch could still win them the game.

Just. 

It all came to catching that little golden ball that Harry could see zipping here and there right in front of him. As happens in these sort of moments, time seemed to expand as did Harry’s awareness and he took in everything on the pitch all around him at the same time.

One piece of luck he noticed right from the start, neither the beaters nor the bludgers were in any position to hamper his run at the snitch in any way. He dismissed them from his mind and they fell out of his consciousness.

The Dark Wizard chasers were engaged with his own, but one had peeled off in a desperate bid to interfere with Harry’s flight to the snitch. A quick mental calculation latter – the chaser would never make it to him in time – so he too was dismissed from Harry’s consciousness.

That left the two spell casters. They were one of the new elements that Harry had introduced to this exhibition game; two players who didn’t have anything to do with the score directly, just like the beaters were to the standard game. Instead they cast spells to either hamper the opposition or benefit their team. The catcher was no where in position to affect Harry either, so he disappeared from Harry’s consciousness too.

That left three things:-

The snitch.

The caster.

And Draco Malfoy hot on his heels.

Harry’s mind worked in overdrive. Neither the caster nor Draco would be able to physically beat him to the snitch. In the time remaining both Draco and the caster would have one shot each to slow or stop him; maybe Draco would have two. So two (possibly three) things that he’d have to dodge and once he had, the snitch would be his.

The caster was drawing and pointing her wand. Draco was not allowed to have a wand by the rules, but Harry took a quick peek behind him to see Draco pulling his wand from out of his robes. ‘Ha,’ Harry thought. The thing was, the penalties for certain in-game infringements were deliberately light – almost, one could say, to encourage rule breaking by the Dark Wizards (and on occasion, some of his auror’s had bent the rules too).

The caster was already beginning to form her spell and Harry knew what it was going to be and knew exactly what he had to do. Even though the caster was nominally the one who would cast the spells to help out their teammates and the catcher would try to hinder the opposition, the positions were very fluid in practice and the caster was lining up, not to take a shot at him, but instead to throw up a shield.

Harry sped up, leaping forward on his broom directly into the path of the nascent shield. The suddenness of his move worked how he had hoped, the young, inexperienced caster was surprised by it, she panicked and the shield evaporated like a popping soap bubble.

Harry risked another glance behind him, but he couldn’t tell if Draco had seen the attempt at the shield or not. He hoped he had, his plan depended upon it and also for the caster to try for another one. What he did see though was Draco aiming a spell at him. Harry returned his attention to the front and suddenly jerked to the left and saw a bolt of red narrowly miss him to his right.

Harry was rapidly gaining upon the snitch. The caster had steadied herself and was about to perform a second shield and no doubt Draco behind him was trying to draw a bead on him too. The next part of Harry’s plan requited pin-point timing. The shield was forming up in front of him and Harry was waiting to see which way the snitch in front of him would jink next and he would follow it.

It jerked downwards, so Harry did too.

Another red beam narrowly missed him, but Harry had something up his sleeve to deal with Draco – literally up his sleeve. Harry gripped the broom with his left hand and reached up into his sleeve with his right and drew out an object. It wasn’t a wand, Harry would not cheat, he was very strict with himself about that point, being one of the head Aurors. No, this was a new device only invented in the last year and as such wasn’t covered in the rules yet.

Harry was relying upon a weakness inherent in shield charms. At their centre where the person was casting them, shield charms were very strong, but at their edges they became weaker, flimsy even. In an enclosed space and on the ground this was not normally a problem, but in the open air as he was, there was plenty of space to manoeuvre to a shield’s edge. Harry could struggle through the edge of it, but it would slow him down. He knew it and he knew that Draco knew it too. Draco would be waiting for him to hit the edge, slow down and provide him with an easy target. Harry couldn’t go right around the field effect of the shield as he would lose the snitch so he was just waiting to see which way the snitch would move next and he would follow it.

It jerked down again slightly, so that’s where Harry went too and hit the edge of the shield. Just as he did and started to feel himself slow, he cast the object in his right hand upwards – in front of and towards where the centre of the shield was. Harry heard Draco’s shouted ‘Stupefy’ but noting hit him. He was suddenly free of the shield charm, popping out of the restriction of it like a cork from a bottle.

Harry was in the clear, he reached out his arm and almost casually grasped his golden prize.


	4. Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, we see the catching of the snitch from Draco's POV

Draco knew he had him, knew he had Harry Potter dead to rights.

The annual Dark Wizard vs. Auror game was, yet again going to fall in his favour.

Harry was in front of him, it was true, and in any normal game of Quidditch the snitch would have been his in mere moments and the whole game with it. That was one thing that had surprised Draco, just how well the Auror chasers had done under the leadership of Dean Thomas. Draco’s surprise move had done well, but he’d thought that the introduction on his part of professional level players would have tilted the game far more in his favour. He hadn’t rated Dean Thomas much before, but he had to readjust his thinking about him now. He’d virtually ignored Dean at school, not for any overt reason, apart from his blood status; he’d had far bigger targets for his ire in Weasley and especially Potter.

Draco really didn’t know how un-racist he really was; un-sexist too. His main bigotry was one installed in him by his upbringing and had no real basis in any fact, when it had fallen away – as it had to in the face of the events of the war and after – it had left him with no real hatreds. He’d never really had any prejudices against skin colour nor sex nor even sexual orientation. It would have surprised Draco if he actually would have thought about it, but apart from a few lingering semi-sentiments about Muggles, he was really quite tolerant.

So Dean and his chasers had kept the Aurors in the game – only just - but enough so that, if Harry were to catch the snitch now, the game would be theirs.

But that wasn’t going to happen: not with him hot on Harry’s heels; not with the shield charm just blossoming to fullness in Harry’s path. By a deft piece of judgement on Harry’s part, he’d already caused the inexperienced caster to falter and drop the first shield she’d attempted to cast. Draco had to hand it to Harry, he really was an astute judge of character. Draco could not help but grin ruefully; it was how he had been roped into this after all.

The second shield charm had solidified in Harry’s path and he now had two bad choices before him. He could go right around the shield and lose sight of the snitch – worse, Draco was coming up behind him and his caster would drop the shield and Draco would be perfectly positioned to catch the snitch himself. Draco knew Harry wouldn’t choose to do so, he couldn’t afford to lose track of the snitch.

Sure enough, as Draco had thought, Harry chose the second option. Harry had waited to see which way the snitch would jink and had followed it when it suddenly lurched downwards. Harry was going to try to go through the edge of the shield, where it became weak enough for him to do so, but it would slow him down almost to a stop. Draco knew this and moreover, he knew that Harry knew that he knew it. Harry had managed to dodge two stunners from him so far; whatever Draco had ever said about Harry Potter, he’d always known that he had superb reflexes, but when he was slowed…

He had, he’d hit the shield just now!

The shield fluoresced as Harry hit its outskirts and it became a struggle between the charm and the broom. Harry’s forward progress had slowed considerably and Draco raised his wand.

“Stupefy!” Draco cried out and with a malicious grin he watched the red beam of the spell shoot out, straight towards Harry.

The grin froze on his face as he saw his plans go awry in the next elongated moment of time. Just as Harry had hit the shield and began to slow, he’d pulled something out of his sleeve – literally out of his sleeve, Draco would have laughed had he not been so shocked. It was a small object, it fit easily in Harry’s hand, and he threw it up into the air right into the middle of the shield. In that instant Draco guessed what it must be and as his spell bent in its flight and curved away from Harry, following the path of the object, it only confirmed what it had to be.

It was a Spell Beam Attractor.

Draco had only heard mention of them; they were very new and very secret, a new ‘weapon’ in the Auror’s arsenal. Once activated it would draw to it any cast spells within a three metre radius. How long the effect lasted, Draco didn’t know, mere seconds from what he’d heard, but enough time for an Auror to escape or rescue someone or ready their own spells or whatever they needed.

Draco and the caster had been stunned by this development, not literally of course, only figuratively; distracted sufficiently that the rest of what they should have done just fell apart. The young caster could blame her inexperience and youth, but Draco had no such excuse except … as he looked at the object, he couldn’t believe what it looked like, what was painted upon it. It had cost him precious seconds, but even if he had come to himself in time, the shield hadn’t been brought down.

The delay was only in the fractions of a second, not enough time even for Draco to have shouted at her to bring the shield down. By the time he’d thought to do so she had collected herself and dispelled the shield; he had to admire her presence of mind to collect herself so quickly given her inexperience.

But it was too late, Draco had to slow too much and he could only impotently watch as Harry reached out and easily caught the snitch.


	5. Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Postscript of Sorts

It was hours later. 

The annual Dark Wizards versus Auror exhibition Quidditch match was over and the Dark Wizards had lost.

They'd had a good run, Draco mused, winning three years in a row. As the captain and the organiser of the Dark Wizards, he’d done his best to make it four years in a row, but it wasn’t to be. Last year he’d caught the snitch and guaranteed his team victory, but this year in a deft piece of play, Harry had beaten him to the golden ball and claimed victory. Narrowly mind you, oh so narrowly, but victory for the Aurors it was nevertheless.

And now it was hours later. All the after game hoo-ha had ended: the loop around the pitch of the loosing team; followed closely by the joyous twice around of the winning team; and all the speeches, victory or otherwise. His own speech, magnanimous in defeat; came just before the Cup had been handed over (figuratively, the real Cup always stayed on display in the Ministry foyer). Then, of course, the winning team had done another lap holding aloft the prized trophy. But now, all the teams had gotten changed and everyone had gone to the after game celebrations. Draco was left to himself for a few minutes before he had to make an appearance at an after-game party – left to himself and his own thoughts in a delicious moment of solitude alone in the change room.

Of all the hue and cry that had happened after the game, one moment stuck with him. As he’d left the pitch with the rest of the team, the supporters – his team’s supporters – had surged towards the barricades. Not to hurl invective as he’d feared for a second or two – he had lost the first game for them in three years after all and it was his inability to catch the snitch and moreover his failure to Prevent Harry from doing so, that was the direct cause. But Draco had been pleasantly surprised, instead of abuse there were shouts of encouragement and consolation.

‘You’ll get them next year.’

‘Good trick with the new chasers Draco, we nearly had ‘em.’

‘They cheated us. Potter pulled a dirty trick – don’t worry we’ll get it banned for next year.’

Draco smiled to himself, he knew they would. When Harry had set up the rules for the game he’d made the final arbiters of the adopted rules the public, through the agency of the Daily Prophet of course. The Prophet’s page about the game would run hot for the next few weeks with the letters from the Dark Wizard supporters crying foul about the spell beam attractor and the Auror supporters ranting about the late substitutions of the two ‘professional’ chasers. After a few weeks the Prophet would ask him to write a column for them to ignite the discussion once again to … well, to sell more papers, that’s what they cared about. Eventually everything would be settled and the spell beam attractors would either be banned or allowed for both teams. Probably not the latter yet, as the devices were still exclusive to the Auror Department.

But that wasn’t what had stuck with him, it was the fact that all the supporters had been positive. They’d even shouted out his name – his name! – in praise and support. So different to how it had been in the years straight after the war; no one had wanted to know him or any of the Malfoys then. All of the Order of the Phoenix people and their supporters (most of them at least) had reviled them for their Death Eater past, even though they had recanted and changed sides. The Death Eaters and the other supporters of Voldemort had also hated them because his father had evaded Azkaban by turning evidence against everyone and anyone he could. No, hated they’d been and so it would have stayed except for …

Speak of the devil …

“Hi there Draco.”

Draco looked up at him and nodded, “Potter.”

It had come as a great surprise to Draco last year – no wait a sec, it wasn’t last year, they’d been talking about how Dean was so it must have been three years ago. Anyway, it had been a surprise when he’d realised that he no longer spat out Harry’s last name dripping with venom and spite. Instead he said it now in a friendly manner, just as he’d say Nott when addressing Theodore. They’d never be friends, he and Harry – probably not – there was too much bad blood under the bridge for that (to horribly mangle two expressions together).

“What are you smirking at Potter?’ he demanded with an amused but interrogating gaze.

Harry answered with his own mischievous grin, “did you like the spell beam attractor?”

Draco tried to look unforgiving and pissed off, but he just couldn’t manage it. He let out a snort of laughter, but quickly reined it in; with one side of his mouth quirked upwards, he asked, “did you paint the smiley face on it or is that how they come?”

The spell beam attractor had been distracting enough, when it caused his stunner to miss Harry, but suddenly seeing the smiley face painted upon it had cost him precious moments when he needed them the most.

Harry’s own smirk broadened into a smile. “No, I asked George to do it especially for you, but given the effectiveness of the extra distraction it afforded me, I just well might consider having them all painted with smiley faces or the like. You never know when a moments distraction can make all the difference – I’ve been in plenty of duels where it has.”

It was little off-hand comments like that, that reminded Draco just how different the life of Harry Potter had turned out to his own. Draco had hardly raised his wand in anger since the war, but Harry thew out comments about, presumably, deadly duels as a matter of course - not making light of them, but as being _de rigueur_. Draco didn't let the thought distract him, and responded to the answer of his question. “Yes, I thought I detected the hand of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes behind its construction. I was initially surprised to see you employ one at all, but upon reflection, their secrecy value must have been exhausted if even I’ve heard of them – as unconnected as I am from the real dark wizard scene.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, “they’ve actually been in service for a year and a half now. I knew word about them had gotten around and its effectiveness, as a secret, had well and truly run its course. But after last year, or was it the one before, when you were all shooting around those jinxes, I just couldn’t resist using one if I needed too and you gave me the perfect opportunity. You have to admit that?”

Draco didn’t say anything, nothing needed to be said, but the time seemed to stretch with the silence laying heavily between them.

Harry must have felt he needed to fill the silence because he said, “Well anyway,” and he stood there at a momentary loss for words, nervously running his hand through his hair, “anyway, I suppose you’ll be off to some do somewhere and … I suppose I’ll see you next year then?”

Draco looked up at him and couldn’t help but fell a stab of pity for this man; so usually confident and purposeful, Harry was unsettled by what this relationship between them was becoming. It might even, one day, one remote day, become friendship – shock, horror!

Draco smiled ruefully and was shaking his head as he got up. He wasn’t stupid; he knew exactly why Harry had started these annual games. It was such a clever move. There would always those people interested in the Dark Arts, it was just the way of the world; he knew that and Harry knew that and so did most people. By giving such people an acceptable outlet for their support and enthusiasm, it stopped them going underground and rallying behind people that would put their proclivities to less socially acceptable pathways; i.e. into blatantly illegal and immoral pursuits. 

For instance, wizard and witch supporters of the Dark Wizard team, in the lead up to the game, had sent him instructions on jinxes they'd developed themselves. Completely unlicensed and illegal, of course, but what could he do except to try them out, practice any good ones and make sure to either use them in the game himself or pass them on to the caster or the catcher. He'd give the authors of the spells a mention - keeping their names hidden behind nom-de-plumes of course -when he came to write up his column for the Phrophet

The game was a brilliant stroke on Harry’s part and had probably done more to put the unrest of the past behind them than any of the proper programs that the Ministry had enacted. And to Draco's extraordinary benefit, Harry had included him in it. When he’d approached that much younger, far more embittered Draco with the plan and the request for assistance, that younger version of himself had greeted the proposal with scepticism and suspicion. He’d nearly turned it down, that was how foolish he’d been, but it had dragged his name up and out of the mud. So much so that when his son, only four now, but when he turned eleven and went to school he could hold his head high and actually be proud of his family name.

So Draco stood in front of this man, whom he now had only respect for. A man who had personally done more for him than he’d had any right to. A man who’d made it possible for them both to be on friendly terms and certainly would never be enemies again. This man who was suddenly uncertain in front of him – nervous even? Draco smiled a genuine smile and held out his hand, shaking the one that Harry raised to meet his own.

“Till next year Potter, we’ll see who has the better trick up their sleeve then shall we?”

**Final Note:**

**Well, here it is and I hope that you all enjoyed it. This little piece of head cannon that just didn't fit in with my other works. And it's not just the inclusion of Draco (helping with his redemption) or the fact of giving those who like the Dark Arts something less inimical to follow as the reasons that Harry has convened these matches. No, remember he truly enjoyed the game and was very good at it. Even though everything says he became an Auror, and probably a good one too, he would have wanted, somehow, to continue to play in someway; someway beyond the backyard stuff with his family. An exhibition style/work game, seems to me, to fit.**

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